It’s hard to believe a state-of-the-art Rupert Neve Designs 5088 console — there are fewer than 100 in the world — is sitting on the fourth floor of Building 2 on the drab industrial campus of Honolulu Community College in Kalihi.

But this 64-channel discrete analog console — the industry standard — outfitted with Martinsound Flying Fader automation is the centerpiece of a newly renovated music studio training facility now the hub of the college’s Music & Entertainment Learning Experience, or MELE, a music business program that’s the first of its kind in Hawaii. The college is hosting a grand opening of the new studio at 3 p.m. Friday.

The program offered its first classes at HCC in Fall 2007 with just 20 students. Now, three years later, MELE boasts more than 100 students enrolled in six classes, with more expected next year and many on track to earn associate of science degrees in either music business or audio engineering. The program will graduate its first students — five total — in spring 2011.

“We’ve definitely proven that, as a program, we’re using what we have, we’re creating, we’re moving forward with a vision,” said Keala Chock, MELE program coordinator and professional musician and songwriter, adding that these graduates “legitimize the program.”

The goal of the program is to foster real-world knowledge, practical skills and basic how-tos in the business of music with an emphasis on creating a solid industry in the Islands, to create music and cultivate talent here that can have an impact globally.

Meaning, this program won’t teach you how to play rock chords or hit a high C. But it will show you how to clean up a track and make it sellable to a national audience.

“It doesn’t matter if you can sing; that’s now what our program is about,” Chock said. “That’s not what we’re teaching here. This isn’t a conservatory. We’re teaching people how to work with the creative side and turn that into a profitable thing.”

Parternship with Nashville College

Part of constructing the most effective curriculum, MELE partnered with Belmont University’s Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business in Nashville, a pioneer in this field. Both Rolling Stone and Time magazines ranked it as one of the top music business schools in the country.

Some of the classes — such as MELE 101 Survey of Business Music and MELE 102 Survey of Recording Technology — are taught via a live teleconference hookup between HCC and Belmont. Students in Hawaii are learning from both local instructors, which include audio engineer John Vierra and producer and drummer Eric Lagrimas, and faculty from the four-year private university in Nashville.

MELE was also specially designed to articulate into Belmont’s undergraduate program, where HCC students can graduate with an associate’s degree and transfer seamlessly into Belmont’s bachelor’s degree program. In fact, one student has already transferred to Belmont and will graduate in May.

“There is great satisfaction in reaching out, partnering and helping other institutions grown and benefit from our knowledge,” said Wesley Bulla, dean and associate professor with the Mike Curb College, which boasts 1,500 students. “It helps us re-think and improve what we do on our own campus in our own program. Also, our students benefit from the interactions, socially and culturally, with students from other institutions. The long-term benefit to Belmont is building the recognition and reputation that we are a worldwide brand and the place for entertainment and music industry education.”

Making Honolulu a City Known For its Music Industry

The purpose of partnering with Belmont was to connect to an established program in a city that’s known for its music industry and provide an opportunity for HCC students to transfer into a four-year university to learn more. But the goal is for HCC to offer its own curriculum independent from Belmont and tailored to the specific needs of students — and specific industry-related issues — in the Islands. MELE officials are already discussing with the University of Hawaii-West Oahu a bachelor’s degree in music business.

“It has given us the opportunity to work with some of the best people in the industry,” said Ramsay Pedersen, retired chancellor of Honolulu Community College, who was instrumental in getting MELE started. “It has given our faculty the opportunity to learn from them and use their curriculum, which we can adopt and modify for our own purposes.”

This is a program that’s been a long time coming, say local music business experts and longtime musicians, many of whom support MELE by providing internships or expertise to students. Industry names such as Gaylord Holomalia, manager of Avex Honolulu Studio in Hawaii Kai, and Jon de Mello of Mountain Apple Co. have supported the program from its inception.

“It’s a program that’s vital to students who are thinking of getting into the music business but are not sure if that’s what they really want to do,” said Holomalia, who moonlights as the keyboardist for local band Kalapana, “Not everyone has the funds to go to a good music program on the Mainland.”

“MELE is real-world,” said de Mello in a statement prepared for the program. “What do creative people in Hawaii need to know about the 21st century music industry? How can we generate recorded music here in Hawaii at world standards, from songwriting to production to marketing? MELE exists to answer those questions.”

Program Funded by Outside Sources

The newly renovated music studio training facility cost nearly $1 million to complete, most all of that from grants awarded by the U.S. Department of Education. Construction of the studio — complete with classroom space, dry sound rooms and enough space for a rock band and its groupies to record live — started in April 2009 and was completed that August. But it remained empty for months, until the Mike Curb Family Foundation donated $250,000 to fund this final phase of the project, which included purchasing equipment.

Getting financial support is one of Chock’s primary responsibilities, as the entire program — excluding his salary — is funded from external sources. The college provided the space and nothing else, not even furniture or office supplies. “We were given nothing,” Chock said.

MELE started at one of the worst fiscal times for the state. With public school teachers on furloughs and government offices cutting back, funding a new program hasn’t been a high priority.

Still, the state has pledged to support MELE, providing it $1.2 million in federal stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in September. And the program has received the designation of “top priority” by the college and will be requesting funding from the Legislature on its behalf.

“The state has been committed to developing our creative industries,” said Georja Skinner, head of the Creative Industries Division of the state’s Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. “Hawaii is at a tipping. A lot of the confluences of energy are coming together.”

Currently, the creative sector — which includes music — contributes about $4 billion annually to Hawaii’s gross domestic product (GDP), Skinner said, ranking fifth. (Tourism is No. 1.) And with the state posting an all-time in film production this year, “there is potential for tremendous growth,” she said.

As the program grows, the opportunities for students are increasing, too. Chock will be taking five students to the 53rd Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in February 2011 and South by Southwest in Austin, Texas in March. He hopes this will give students more exposure to the music industry beyond what’s available in Hawaii.

“The program and the industry here isn’t clearly defined,” Chock said. “You can see an EMT driving an ambulance and say, ‘There’s a job.’ You can’t do that with (this industry). They need to know that there is an industry out there, that there are jobs.”

Historian and Retired Warner Bros. Exec Behind Idea

The concept of MELE started with a meeting.

Historian and author Gavan Daws and retired Warner Bros. Nashville president Jim Ed Norman, who now lives on the Big Island, brought the idea to then-HCC Chancellor Pedersen in November 2005. A year later the college received a five-year Title III Developing Institutions grant from the U.S. Department of Education totaling $2.5 million, some of which went to fund MELE. A year after that, the first classes in the program were being held.

Creating the program was a no-brainer, said Pedersen, especially after talking with professional musicians and industry insiders.

“It was agreed that this town was in desperate need of opportunities for students to do what they would have to go to Belmont or the Berklee College of Music to do,” he said. “We had to see what could be done.”

There was no way Eric Kelekolio could afford a Mainland program. But MELE has offered the 25-year-old a chance to learn more about the music business, something he admitted he knew nothing about.

“Before MELE, I wasn’t even thinking about college,” said Kelekolio who’s majoring in audio engineering and expects to graduate with an associate’s degree next semester. “I know that music was something that I really loved and wanted to do for a living, so I enrolled in the program … It took a lot of motivation and believing in myself because it’s one of those jobs that people want but don’t really get. I didn’t think it was realistic.”

Until now, he said.